Revision as of 15:04, 17 July 2013

Contents

Previous Releases

Earlier releases, which with manual modifications work upto Fedora 14 are linked from the EfikaMX page. These older images in various degrees with both the Genesi Smarttop and Smartbook.

Current Release

The contents of the image is based on the Generic Root Filesystem armhfp. XFCE and most of the desktop basics are included. Very little
changes were needed over all. As the Smartbook has only 512MB of RAM, it
is recommended to add some swap space, re-using the swap on the internal
HD works for me (you need to update your /etc/fstab).

Kernel Notes

The current kernel configuration as found in Sascha's tree does not play
very nice with the Fedora rootfs. With some load quite some oopses occur
and it often results in a kernel panic (this happens because some 'sh'
process reads /proc/meminfo, no idea what process, or why). I have been
able to re-configure the kernel to the Fedora specifics, while keeping
to the options from Sascha's defconfig. This kernel looks more stable,
and a 'yum update' over the integrated Wifi adapter has finished
successfully.

Boot configuration

A difficulty with using this image, is that you need to configure your
Smartbook to boot from SD-card, not the internal SPI-NOR. This change is
done by flipping three dip-switches that are located under the keyboard,
next to the flat-cable that connects the keyboard. The Genesi site
contains a very good explanation on removing the keyboard so that you
can access the switches.

The standard and default configuration of these switches cause the
system to use the bootloader (uboot) to boot from the internal SPI-NOR
and look like this:

+---------+
| X |
| X X X |
+---------+

Change this to the following to boot with barebox from the SD-card:

+---------+
| X X |
| X X |
+---------+

For now, I was only successful with booting from the left SD-card slot.
barebox should also support booting from the micro-SD-card slot that is
accessible by removing the battery. You will need to modify the barebox
configuration (adding variables/scripts) for this. A future
release of this remix will hopefully come with a modified barebox
configuration so that both card slots work (and also separating zImage
from the initramdisk).

Devicetree changes

Known Issues

poweroff is unreliable, you sometimes need to press the powerbutton for a while to completely poweroff the system

capslock does not light the LED (a patch for this has been included, but is non-functional)

a reboot occasionally triggers a kernel panic early on boot (contains get_vmalloc_info and meminfo_proc_show), forcing a poweroff by pressing the powerbutton (and re-inserting the battery?) makes the system boot again